Build a Better Mouse

When I lived on a farm in Lamar County, keeping mice out of our single-wide was a matter for continuous quality improvement.

Ultrasonic plug-ins seemed effective and humane, and poison packets, pellet boxes and bar poisons worked, too.

Snap traps were luckless, and glue traps were marginal (I did some catch and release, but later only caught, and more than I liked, a mouse would struggle away with the trap in the vent system never to be found but to be smelled until the decaying was done).

I really should have found a way to build a better mouse--one that would not need to be trapped because it stayed where it was best for all interested parties. I should have found a way to build a better mouse catcher--one that would know how to be all things to all creatures.

Zossima's maxim works, then, in many situations:

If I had been righteous myself, perhaps there would have been no criminal standing before me.

And perhaps it is the grace of God that helps me see that whoever goes, there go I.